Challenges in Chemistry Graduate Education A Workshop Summary (2012) / Chapter Skim
Currently Skimming:
2 The Nature of the Challenge
2 The Nature of the Challenge
Pages 5-22
The Chapter Skim interface presents what we've algorithmically identified as the most significant single chunk of text within every page in the chapter.
Select key terms on the right to highlight them within pages of the chapter.
From page 5... ...
and Ann A Flowers University Professor at Harvard University -- focused specifically on the challenges facing chemistry graduate education.
|
From page 6... ...
. • The United States shed 28 percent, or 687,000, high-technology manufacturing jobs since reaching its peak of 2.5 million in FIGURE 2-1 The unemployment rates remain high for chemists and chemical engineers.
|
From page 7... ...
. When the executives of multinational cor porations look at these data, said Platz, "they see where future demand is, and they redeploy their workforce accordingly." • Young people who are graduating from college with an under graduate chemistry degree face stark choices.
|
From page 8... ...
"If they don't see it in chemistry departments, they will go elsewhere." WHAT NEEDS TO CHANGE? Since the 1800s, chemistry has been an extraordinarily successful science, noted George Whitesides.
|
From page 9... ...
In particular, Shakhashiri noted with regard to the final working group, why do only 62 percent of PhD students in the chemical sciences finish within ten years? Target audiences for the commission's report include faculty and academic leaders at research universities and comprehensive institutions, graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, faculty and students at undergraduate institutions, federal and state policy makers, funding agencies, employers, industry leaders, national laboratories, private foundations, and others in the public sector.
|
From page 10... ...
Even major societal issues like environmental sustainability, the rising costs of health care, and enhancing national security have major chemical underpinnings. Despite the current potential of the chemical sciences, the profession has been shrinking, has become less innovative, and is attracting less attention, said Whitesides.
|
From page 11... ...
"Most of the emphasis goes into, in my opinion, research productivity, as opposed to thinking about the students." Professors work endlessly to secure grants, which is quite different than focusing on the training of graduate students. The Liebig model, after the German chemist Justus von Liebig (18031873)
|
From page 12... ...
Whitesides briefly listed a number of difficult issues that a change in this current social contract would raise, many of which are discussed in future chapters of this report: • Research institutions and individual researchers would need to achieve a new balance between curiosity-driven research and problem-solving research, which would require careful consider ation of many tradeoffs. • Academic research is a "fundamentally elitist activity" and may need to become more so.
|
From page 13... ...
. we're going to waste some of the best people in science." THE PERSPECTIVE FROM UNIVERSITY ADMINISTRATORS Several university administrators at the workshop provided their views on the problems facing chemistry graduate education.
|
From page 14... ...
There also will be more pressure on universities to ensure that graduate students develop the right kinds of skills to meet national needs. Chemistry does a better job of preparing students for careers beyond academia than most other disciplines, said Thorp.
|
From page 15... ...
The attrition rate in chemistry is high (as described below) , and some graduates are doing multiple postdoctoral fellowships before they get jobs.
|
From page 16... ...
For example, Julie Aaron, a recent University of Pennsylvania chemistry PhD who now teaches chemistry and biochemistry at DeSales University, said that almost half the women in her graduate program left within the first two years. She said that all of the women who left the program had different reasons for leaving.
|
From page 17... ...
Branch Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Berkeley, who was a member of the steering committee for the workshop, pointed in a discussion session to what he called "the elephant in the room": though many chemistry graduate students are well served by their research advisors, some are not being educated properly or even treated appropriately. In proposals for change, ways of curbing abuses of graduate students should be a major consideration, he said.
|
From page 18... ...
the chemical sciences can preserve and enhance quality with less money. "If we can come up with some strategies to do that, this workshop, in my opinion, will be a great success." He challenged the workshop participants to devise experiments in chemistry graduate education that can inspire the field and attract support.
|
From page 19... ...
population. According to the report, when high school sophomores were asked about their degree aspirations, one-third of African American and Hispanic students aspire to receive a graduate degree, compared with 41 percent of white students and half of Asian students (Bozick and Lauff 2007)
|
From page 20... ...
Another vulnerability for students considering graduate degrees is debt. Stu dents who graduate with a master's degree have on average a cumulative debt incurred during their undergraduate and graduate years of $50,000, while students with a PhD have an average cumulative debt of $77,000.
|
From page 21... ...
For employers, the report recommends sponsoring graduate fellowship pro grams that reflect career pathways into various industries, creating lifelong learn ing accounts for professional employees that would encourage people already in a career to pursue advanced study, clarifying entry points into careers, and communicating the skills needed for 21st-century jobs beginning even at the high school level. For policy makers, the report recommends the creation of the COMPETES Doctoral Traineeship Program, which would provide five years of support for doc toral students to help prepare the future talent needed in critical areas of national need such as health care, energy, the financial sector, and cybersecurity.
|
From page 22... ...
It is examining what graduate students know about career paths, their aspirations, how they learn about occu pational opportunities, the role of faculty and universities in this process, and the kinds of careers and occupations that people with graduate degrees follow. As part of the study, a survey of students who took the GRE between 2002 and 2011 generated 6,000 responses from students who are planning or currently engaged in graduate education.
|
Key Terms
This material may be derived from roughly machine-read images, and so is provided only to facilitate research.
More
information on Chapter Skim is available.